Ravi, (01)
you wrote:
> Horse in Sanskrit is Ashwa and there may also be other names. (02)
Wow! OK. It is pretty easy to believe that "Ashwa" is a derivative of
"ekwos", although k to sh involves a long chain of consonant migrations,
viz. k - kh - h - hs - s - sh. (03)
> But
> metaphysically Ashwa also means Rays of light. Ashwini -twin (pair) of
> light. (04)
And is it also a play on words? What is the word for "light" from which
it derives? (I notice that you translate "shweta" below as "white", and
at least the "shwe" part is common. The PIE root "lwuk"(?) becomes
Greek leuctos ("white") and Latin "lux" ("light"), so that shift of
meaning in a derivative is not so far.) (05)
> One of the Vedic texts spanning Hundreds of pages that I am reading now
> is called Shweta-ashwatar Upanishad (literally either white light or
> White Horse) certainly the content is about ENLIGHTENMENT and this text
> is certainly older than 2000BC, from other contexts about Upanishads
> timeframe. (06)
I was taught that the Vedic texts were first *written down* around 1500
B.C. (Has the history also been revised in that area?) (07)
I don't doubt that the content was an oral tradition for much longer
than that, and horses have been around for well over 10,000 years, so
the wild animal was probably known to Paleolithic cultures. But oral
traditions must carry the stories and teachings in the language of their
audience -- the concepts stay but the words change. When the Pentateuch
was first written down (somewhere in the 700-500 B.C. timeframe), the
language in which it was written was significantly evolved from the
actual language of Moses and the Israelites of 1000 years earlier. And
the "eyewitness history" of the Mongols was written in Chinese (and
Sanskrit?), because the Mongol language of 1200 wasn't written. So I
believe the Vedic texts were written in the language of 1500 B.C., more
or less, regardless of the nominal time and language of the origin of
their conceptual content. (08)
-Ed (09)
P.S. These are wonderful discussions, but maybe we need to move the PIE
chatter off the ontolog forum exploder. I don't find it a surprise that
many ontologists would have a background and interest in languages and
linguistics. But it is not clear how useful such discussions are to the
mission of the exploder, even when John Sowa loves the topic. ;-) (010)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (011)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (012)
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